Richard Elliot Friedman's book 132 developed its evidence in the more-or-less chronological story of how he did his detective work. This book color-codes the Torah's sources within the Torah. (For his books I've read, click on his name.)

Book 133 begins by reviewing the very large number of clues (as did the Fall 2005 review article in Bible Review). The seven major bodies of evidence for the Documentary Hypothesis are summarized. They are:

• (1) Linguistic
• (2) Terminology
• (3) Consistent Content
• (4) Continuity of Narrative
• (5) Connects with Other Parts of the Bible
• (6) Sources’ Relations to Each Other and to History
• (7) Convergence.

Although (1) and (2) provided the first hints, (7) is the strongest as it ties all evidence together.

After this summary chapter, book 133 then presents the Torah using a color-coding scheme. Here I preface within parentheses using these letters: J, E, RJE, P, D, and R. For example, consider some J and P excerpts in Exodus 14:21 And Moses reached his hand out over the sea. And YHWH drove back the sea with a strong east wind all night and turned the sea into dry ground. And the water was split. 14:22 And the children of Israel came through the sea on the dry ground. And the water was a wall to them at their right and at their left... 14:27 And Moses reached his hand out over the sea. And the sea went back to its strong flow toward morning, and Egypt was fleeing toward it. And YHWH tossed the Egyptians into the sea. 14:28 And the waters went back and covered the chariots and horsemen. Here are two conflated stories: J has a strong wind blowing all night to push the sea back, then toward morning the wind ceases; P has Moses divide the sea into walls of water (but P‘s waters go back after the Egyptians were tossed into the sea!). When you read Exodus 14 three times (once each for J, E, and P), each story flows (no pun intended) very smoothly and consistently.

Another example is in the story of Noah’s Ark. In J there are seven pairs of clean beasts (as J has sacrifices), but P has two pairs of both clean and unclean (no sacrifices then in P, where only priests do sacrifices.). Deducing when sacrifices begin is one important source clue. More generally, J talks of a deity who can regret things that he has done, but P lacks this aspect – in P God is treated more as a transcendent controller of the universe. The color-coded readings of book 133 give you consistent and enriching stories of the “w-questions” (who, when, where and why) behind the story. Friedman has very great praise for the redactor R, whose conflating has brought out insights not in the original sources. I think he well achieved his objective of helping readers appreciate the Bible as rich, complex and beautiful as a result of the way in which it was created. I’ll chose book 133 when I want to read the various versions of the smooth and consistent stories in the Torah.